Once Smith passes security screening, the White House will officially name her as the replacement to federal CTO Todd Park, who will soon begin as a Silicon Valley-based technology adviser to the White House. Smith, who is now vice president of Google X, was named by Bloomberg as a top candidate for the position.

During her time at Google X, Smith founded projects like think tank Solve for X and Women Techmakers. Smith was also a vice president of business development at Google for nine years and general manager of Google.org.

Other top candidates reported by Bloomberg were Twitter's Alex Macgillivray and former LinkedIn executive DJ Patil. Smith would become the third federal CTO, following Park and Aneesh Chopra, who took the position after it was established by President Barack Obama in 2009.